The hip joint
The hip joint is where the proximal end of our femur meets our pelvis. We have two hip joints, one on the right and one on the left side of our body. To create the hip joint, the knobby end of our femur, the femoral head, inserts into the indentation in our pelvis, called the acetabulum.
The hip joint is a ball-and-socket type joint. Ball-and-socket joints allow for movement in all directions. At our hip joints, our legs can move in all planes and in a wide range of motion. This is great when we need mobility, but we also need stability at our hip joints. Our legs, after all, have to carry our body weight when we walk and run. For that reason, we have many strong muscles and ligaments that cross in every direction around the hip joint. They help maintain the stability of the hip joint while allowing us to do powerful movements, like walking uphill, running, and kicking.
How do our hips get tight?
When we develop the muscles that surround the hip joint through sports and activities, they can get short and tight. The tension in muscles or groups of muscles, relative to muscles that do the same (agonists) or opposite actions (antagonists), can also get out of balance if we use them repetitively in certain patterns. For example, our abductors (gluteus minimus and medius) might be tight relative to our adductor group. Or, our hip flexors (rectus femoris, iliopsoas, and others) might be tight relative to our hip extenders (hamstrings and gluteus maximus).
Regularly engaging in certain kinds of sports and activities, like cycling or running, for example, can tighten muscles around our hips, restrict range of motion, and result in imbalances in tension around our hip joints. Other types of activities, like lots of sitting, can also lead to imbalances. Sitting tends to shorten certain muscles when we do a lot of it.
Why open the hips?
The hips in yoga are important joints for connecting the feet to the upper body. When we move, force travels through our ankles, knees, and hips to get from the ground into our pelvis and beyond. When we start moving, even into simpler postures like triangle, tension in our hips restricts ease of movement in the pose and can push tension into other joints like our knees. More functionally, opening the hips in yoga can allow us to sit in a more neutral position since it enables the pelvis to move more freely, possibly reducing postural compensations in our body. And that can reduce the likelihood of chronic pain patterns like low back and neck pain.
Yoga stretches our hip muscles
When we first start a yoga practice, we may encounter tight muscles around our hip joints. We may also encounter particular imbalances between groups of muscles. Depending on the specific yoga practices we’re doing, yoga practice can help us stretch tight muscles around our hips, opening our hip range of motion.
We can work on hip opening in yoga in just about all categories of yoga postures. There really aren’t any poses that don’t involve the hip joint in some way. For example, in forward bends, we’re lengthening muscles on the back of the hip joint. In backbends, we’re lengthening muscles on the front of the hip joint. There is one specific category of poses, however, that we think of when we talk about hip opening in yoga. That category is poses that include external rotation of the hip joint.
External rotation poses
External rotation poses are any of those that lead up to more extreme versions like full lotus and leg behind head. Common variations that are more accessible include standing poses like tree pose and seated poses like janu sirsasana A. Even foundational poses like triangle and side angle include some aspect of external hip rotation within the pose. In a triangle pose, we’re externally rotating the front hip. In a side angle, we’re also externally rotating the front hip joint. So when we say hip opening in yoga, what we often mean is preparing our hips with the kind of range of motion to work with postures that include a half lotus or lotus aspect, or in more extreme range of motion, a leg behind the head.
What hip muscles are we lengthening?
You might initially imagine we would want to lengthen the internal rotators of the hip, in order to more easily do external rotation. However, in yoga postures, we’re really doing a combination of movements most of the time. We rarely move only in one plane, so the direction of muscular action gets more complicated. For external rotation in seated postures when we’ve flexed the hip joint specifically, the anatomy gets a little trickier. We actually need to lengthen the deep six lateral rotator muscles and the gluteal muscles to find more ease in external rotation from this position.
How do we do hip opening in yoga?
Whether you’re preparing for more advanced postures, or you just want a more functional range of motion in your hips, I recommend you start small with accessible poses and preparation stretches. Depending on the amount of tension in your hip muscles, it can take a significant amount of time to lengthen those muscles. Going slowly and starting with more accessible poses can help prevent injury while still opening your hips.
Standing postures
In standing, accessible postures might include standing foundational postures like triangle and side angle, or simpler poses that incorporate external hip rotation like tree pose. You might also include a standing, one-legged version of the fire logs stretch that many people are familiar with. Stand a foot or so away from the wall and rest your back against the wall. Then bring one leg up and place the foot just above the knee of the opposite leg. Now fold forward until you feel a stretch along the outside of one or both hips. You can explore what happens when you lean a little to the right or left. You might find a better spot where the stretch feels more productive. After a few breaths on one side, repeat the stretch on the other side.
Seated postures
In seated postures, we can use the same approach to opening our hips to prepare for more complex yoga postures. Start with more accessible postures like janu sirsasana A. Or, try out my series of preparation stretches specifically intended to open your hips for lotus. When simpler ranges of motion feel easy, you can deepen the pose or add more complex variations as you work toward doing poses like full lotus.
Consistency
Whether you’re working on hip opening in yoga in standing poses, seated postures, or both, you’ll get the most benefit if you are consistent in your practice. If you start with smaller ranges of motion and practice consistently, you’ll build up to deeper ranges of motion over time. As you work with a hip-opening intention, be attentive to your knees. Remember that the hip joint and knee joint are intimately connected. Don’t put force into your knees to try to compensate for tight hips by forcing yourself into a pose that your body isn’t ready for yet. Take the time to do hip opening in yoga gradually.
Conclusion
Hip opening in yoga can refer to generally increasing the range of motion around the hip joints by lengthening the muscles. However, hip opening in yoga often refers more specifically to increasing our range of motion in the external hip rotation direction to prepare us for poses like half lotus and full lotus. Hip opening can help us access yoga poses, and it can help us move and sit in more functional, balanced ways.